Light Betrayal in August

 
The night unspooled slow as a ripple

on a reed-choked pond, thick with the unsaid unsung

questions what if why not what if how come?

tiny mouths like fish nipping the surface

 

teasing the moon out of the treetops.

Belly-down in soft grass did I watch

a honeybee burrow into the tip of a foxglove

and imagine your hands again love

 

indecent at my little twilight tryst?

Lace panties, a book, a beer and a candle…

I read and wrote and dozed but didn’t text

you here. Promises kept, good girl

 

go swallow summer hand over fist

sweet basil, sungolds, like this like this.
 
 
 

Diana Whitney’s first book, Wanting It (Harbor Mountain Press 2014), became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus, Salon, The Washington Post, Yellow Chair Review, and many more. She is the poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and currently finishing a memoir-in-essays about motherhood and sexuality. www.diana-whitney.com